Sven’s chance to prove he’s a class act

Sven-Göran Eriksson’s stock is still high in Europe after his success in different countries. Can he revive it in England?

A DECADE ago next weekend, Sven-Göran Eriksson was supposed to be starting his first job in English club management, lured to the northwest by a sugar daddy of a chairman. He had agreed the terms of a deal that would have made him at the time probably the highest-paid manager in the Premiership. He reneged on the contract before it had started, preferring the billions of Italian lire that Lazio were ready to make available to the generosity of Blackburn Rovers.

At that point Eriksson was being pursued by the most aggressive mould-breakers of English and Italian football - the Blackburn whom Jack Walker had funded all the way to a Premiership title, and a Lazio who would outspend Milan, Internazionale and Juventus in the lead-up to their historic 2000 championship, the standout prize in Eriksson's CV from club football. To his Lazio scudetto, you can add a Uefa Cup, achieved